Tapping on the Wall

In the list below I've written a few words about each piece. If something catches your fancy, give it a click. You're invited to tap back with your thoughts.How Jack London Changed My Life consists of capsule book reviews. More opinions fromPhillip Routh

Monday, July 21, 2014

Male versus female novelists — which are better able to
enter into the sensibility of someone of the opposite sex?

This issue arose when I read Arthur Schnitzler’s Theresa — its subtitle is “The Chronicle of a Woman’s Life.”

It struck me how seldom either a man or a woman author
attempts what he did. I looked at the Modern Library’s list of the one hundred
best novels of the twentieth century (written in the English language) and
found less than ten that could qualify. In my own library (I keep books that
are, to me, in some way significant achievements) the results were similar.

Of course, almost every novel has people of both sexes,
and in the successful ones both males and females are portrayed well. But what
I want to explore are authors who set out to write exclusively from the
perspective of a main character whose sex is different from their own. All
other characters must play supporting roles. Concerning such exclusivity of
approach, think of the legion of brilliant novels written by men from a male
viewpoint, or by women from a female viewpoint. So the rarity of books in which
an author goes into the mind of the other sex and occupies it is notable.
Especially since empathy is a writer’s bread and butter.

What factors are at work?

We write what we know. Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians
and American Indians almost invariably use people of their particular race as
their main characters. When, in The Confession of Nat Turner, William
Styron presumed to enter the mind of a slave, he was roundly criticized. It was
a “How can he know?” reaction. As for religion and nationality, they’re factors
when they impact one’s place in society. “Jewish novels” (such as Myron S.
Kaufmann’s Remember Me to God)were written when Jews felt they
were marginalized. The Irish experience in Depression-era Chicago plays an
important role in James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan. These types of
novels fade away when integration into mainstream American life takes place.

The tendency to stick to our kind extends to economics.
Writers who know affluence write about affluent people, those who know poverty
write about the impoverished. Thus John P. Marquand in The Late George Apleyand Tillie Olsen in Yonnondiowrote about two widely disparate
worlds existing in the same country during the same period of time. Neither had
the background to write the book the other did.

But sex falls into a different category. Only the societal roles assigned to males and
females is a divisive issue. But I don’t consider that to be a barrier to
insight. Yet a barrier seems to exist.

Of the sixteen books in my library where that barrier was
successfully bridged, twelve were written by men, four by women.

Maybe this reflects a bias — I may prefer masculine
novels, even when they take on a woman’s point-of-view. Maybe I don’t
understand women, and the male authors didn’t really get the female characters
right; I just thought they did. Or maybe the issue is one of an inequality of
representation; in the Modern Library list, only eight authors are
female. My own collection is skewed toward male writers, though not to that
degree.

Anyone’s input is welcome. I know of books that do
exactly what I’m concerned with, but that I haven’t read. Enlighten me about
the successful ones that I’ve missed. There must be ground rules as to what qualifies for
inclusion. As noted above, novels with many characters don’t meet the
exclusivity clause. But I confronted a thorny problem in the case of books that
have two to four major characters of different sexes, in which the author goes
into the minds of each person (William Trevor’s Felicia’s Journey,Soseki
Natsume’sThe Gate, Barbara Pym’s Quartet in Autumn). Some even
alternate: one section is entirely from a male perspective, another from a
female (as in John Fowles’s The Collector). It was with regret that I
decided to exclude all such novels. Thus Anna Karenina didn’t make the
cut because half the book is devoted to Levin. Actually, Levin was an addition.
In letters Tolstoy expressed dissatisfaction with Anna: of what worth was a
book about a woman who committed adultery? He thought he needed a character who
made the right choices in picking a life’s mate. Tolstoy’s tendency to instruct
won out over his novelist’s instincts. I preferred the Anna sections, and I’m not alone; some abridged versions simply leave Levin out.

Success is another issue. An author can attempt
what I’m proposing, but fail (or flop) in their depiction of the other sex. Of course, the unsolvable problem of our
disagreeing as to worth arises. Since this is my essay, you’ll be getting my
opinions; all I can offer is a rationale for how I felt. For me, Francine Prose’s
Blue Angel was a failure and John Updike’s S was a flop. And I
thought that Henry James was unable to enter into the mind and emotions of a
little girl in What Maisie Knew. I don’t, therefore, give these novels a place in the discussion.

Some authors quite effectively portray someone of a
different sex, but the books don’t quite, for one reason or another, rise to
the level of all-around excellence that I’m setting as a standard. Still, they
deserve mention.

What follows next are the ones that made the cut: excellent novels by a man or woman that are told from the perspective of the
other sex (in a few cases exclusively, in most predominantly to an overwhelming
degree). I find it interesting that only one uses a first person narrator
(and that’s in the form of a diary). I’ve made a comment on each (and some get a full review at my site). I’ll begin with the
novels written by men.

In many ways Emma isn’t
feminine; Flaubert may have been stating a fact with his “Madame Bovary, c’est
moi.” He also wrote a long story about a woman — “A Simple Heart” — that’s
wonderful. Felicite, in her simplicity, is the polar opposite of Emma — and of
Flaubert.

Though Dreiser got Carrie
right, the novel weakens near the end. When Ruth and Augustus Goetz wrote the
screenplay for the William Wyler film version, they solved this problem. At the
point where Carrie and Hurstwood part ways, the movie follows Hurstwood. His
story is more dramatic and believable than Carrie’s. Dreiser, to keep true to
his premise, had to stick mainly with Carrie, even though I think he was drawn
more to Hurstwood’s descent.

Mrs. Bridge – Evan Connell

This is pointillist fiction,
in which all the dots (the short episodes) come together until a full portrait
emerges. I was unaware, when I read it, that there’s much of Connell’s own
mother in India Bridge (the author conceded as much). I recently read his The Patriot, which also has autobiographical aspects, but in that novel the
mother is notable for being a complete nonentity. In Mrs. Bridge Connell
found the depths that exist in a muted person.

The Bad Seed – William March

We’re never in the mind of
Rhoda; what March explores is the mother, Christine, as she realizes the truth
about her daughter — and about herself. March had a skewed mentality. He could
present something seemingly harmless and, in turning it over, startle you. If
you believe the theme of an evil child is hackneyed, consider that March was
the first and the best to do it. His focus on a
sympathetic character confronted with a terrible dilemma is key to his success.

After reading this, I got
another novel by Fontane — Jennie Treibel — and was disappointed; in it
he was more concerned with social/political considerations than with a human
being. Effie’s humanness is this book’s predominant quality. If I had read Jennie
first, I would never have read Effie. Kind of scary, how chance plays a
role in what we experience in our reading lives.

The Season of the Witch – James Leo Herlihy

A seventeen-year-old girl
keeps a diary. In the first entry, dated September 2,1969, she’s about to run
away from her suburban home for the hippy subculture of New York City. Gloria
is a good writer, and often funny, but this novel is a dark one. Lies are what
Herlihy exposes; Gloria is not how she sees herself, nor is the Age of Aquarius
world she enters a glamorous or fulfilling one. The book was written in 1971,
so its topicality makes it relevant to the time but also dates it.

The Black Swan – Thomas Mann

Mann’s very short last novel
had its origin in a story his wife told him about a middle-aged woman who,
after falling in love with a younger man, had seemingly experienced a return of
her menstrual cycle, only to discover that she had cancer. Mann presents
Rosalie’s story in a manner that is both emotional and clinical, suffused with
longing and harshly realistic.

The Lonely Passion of
Judith Hearne – Brian Moore

A repressed, middle-aged
spinster is Moore’s subject, and even when he takes the perspective of other
people, Judith Hearne is the person they’re observing. This is a bleak novel,
but a moving and truthful one. It’s also tumultuous, for Judith’s poverty
places her in precarious straits. Moore writes compassionately about a woman
for whom life is a struggle that she must engage in alone.

The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett

The idea for this novel came
to the author when he watched an elderly lady — fat, ugly — make such a
commotion in a restaurant that she became an object of ridicule for the other
diners. Bennett thought of the young girl she had once been, and the infinite
number of infinitesimal changes that brought her to what she had become. To him
this had great pathos. Bennett follows the lives of two sisters, beginning when they’re
teenagers. One chooses a quiet life, the other seeks adventure and romance. But
those terms — “quiet” and “adventure” — lose their conventional meanings.

Tanizaki presents us with
three women. One is happily married, one is searching for a husband (as time runs
out for her) and the third is sexually “liberated.” The social context is a
strong element; Tanizaki presents life in Osaka in the pre-war years. Yet he
wrote it during World War II; in a sense, the author cast aside the horrors
around him and looked back upon a time of peace. Perhaps, in his depiction the
ordinary lives of three sisters, he was saying to the world, This is
what we are.

Steele takes full possession
of a woman with the mind of a child. There’s nothing condescending in his
portrayal of Debbie; she’s as fully-developed a character as you’ll find in
fiction. More developed, actually, in that she experiences emotions intensely.
Her observations are often perceptive because they come to her directly,
uncluttered by logic. It’s perplexing to me that someone who could write as
well as Steele produced only one novel (while hacks churn out dozens).

This is the novel (which
Schnitzler subtitled “The Chronicle of a Woman’s Life”) that gave me the germ
of the idea for this essay. The word “chronicle” suggests an element of
detachment. Though the author does scrupulously report events, we go deep into
the psychology of Theresa. As the years pass and happiness constantly eludes
her, she comes to feel that she doesn’t matter to anyone. Schnitzler’s major
accomplishment is that Theresa mattered to me.

So those are the twelve
novels by men in which women are the predominant presence. What follows are the
four by women in which they take up residence in the minds of men.

The Bachelors – Muriel Spark

Using eight male characters,
Spark gives us a panoramic look at the thoughts and emotions of that subset of
humanity that stays, for one reason or another, unattached. It’s a very active
novel, full of events, but at its core is an unmovable sadness. Because Spark
is often a cold dissector of people, the empathy she displays for these men is
noteworthy.

Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor

This must be judged as a
comic novel, with religious belief being Hazel Mote’s obsession. Whereas in the
other books discussed the characters are definitely of one sex or the other,
Hazel’s extreme oddity makes him a sexless being. Nor do the secondary
characters fall anywhere near the spectrum of normality. Still, O’Connor chose
to use a male as her vessel to set sail in a strange world.

Daniel Skipton is also odd,
and of indeterminate sexuality, but one can relate to him and his struggles. He’s
a writer who feels that he’s unappreciated and who resents the poverty which
causes him to constantly scrounge and manipulate in order to survive. Are not
these feelings — of being unappreciated, of resentment — universal? What makes
Skipton different is the ferocious anger that infects his thoughts and
emotions. That I felt pity for such a warped person is the true measure of
Johnson’s success.

Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton

A three character novel, but
the two women simply play a role in Ethan’s life. At the core of
this grim book is a man’s effort to find that which will satisfy him; mainly,
love. Wharton frames her Greek tragedy in an unusual way. Before Chapter One a
writer (an “I”) collects information; at the end of this introduction he writes
that he had “found the clue to Ethan Frome” and is now able to put together the
“vision of his story.” On the next page we’re with young Ethan on a snowy New
England night.

I wrote earlier that there didn’t seem to be a “barrier
to insight.” And, indeed, for the authors cited above no insurmountable barrier
existed. Still, in their other novels most of these
authors wrote only from the perspective of someone of their own sex. Flannery O’Connor,
in her stories, probably crosses the line more often than any of the others.
Yet sex isn’t the issue in her work; her recurring subject is the tension
between a mother and a son or daughter.

There are many authors of note who never make the
attempt to fully and exclusively cross the line. And then there are those who
are unable to convincingly portray a member of the opposite sex even as a
secondary character. The women in Hemingway’s novels always struck
me as artificial. This may, possibly, reflect something lacking in him. If a
man or woman’s attitude is antagonist or dismissive, they will fail (or flop).
And no fully-dimensioned human being can emerge if treated as an accessory or a
stereotype.

Anyone who assumes the perspective of a person of a
different sex must have — besides insight — empathy. In my brief remarks on the
books above I constantly express the fact that I was moved emotionally. That
feeling was absent in the case of Hazel Mote — I couldn’t relate to him. And in
only one novel is a character unsympathetic. Madame Bovary is a deplorable
person. But at the end I did have pity for her suffering. Flaubert punished
her in a most brutal way, but he could not help but have feelings for her.

In my so-called “male versus female” premise, men were
the winners. I’m not asserting that this means anything definitive, but I also
don’t reject the possibility that men
are better able to depict the inner lives of women. My real purpose is to bring
up an issue for consideration. The rarity of authors “switching sexes” must be
meaningful. The question is, What does it mean? I know a choice is being made,
but why does the choice almost always go one way? At any rate, I wish authors
would try to switch over more often — to leave what may be an unconscious
comfort zone and explore unknown territory. They may learn something about
themselves.